


but I see a brand new day

by CloudCover (RainyForecast)



Series: Clear Blue Morning [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M, Sid POV, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 22:51:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13110165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainyForecast/pseuds/CloudCover
Summary: Sid’s gone, fucking gone, okay, right from the moment he’d first met them. He’s never going to forget it, not for the rest of his life.A timestamp for Clear Blue Morning.





	but I see a brand new day

Sid’s gone, fucking gone, okay, right from the moment he’d first met them. He’s never going to forget it, not for the rest of his life. 

The two of them, caught in a tender parent-child moment, Zhenya’s huge hands carefully plaiting Alina’s thick brown hair, the way they were quietly laughing and teasing each other.

Sid likes to think he fell in love with the idea of being a family, not just with Zhenya. Although he does, love him, that is, deeply. He loves Alina too. He’s always wanted children. But he’d thought that it was too late for him, even if he had a baby (and with who?)  immediately, would he still be playing hockey when his child was old enough to remember? The idea of his hypothetical children never knowing that part of his life was something he’d resigned himself to. He’d smile and mess around at family skates, trying not to let on that the sight of his teammates with their lovely families and beautiful children hurt like a physical blow.

But now. It’s different now. He comes home from practice, or a game, or a road trip, and he has to step over Alina’s gear in the foyer. There are Russian books and movies scattered among his own along his shelves, and Alina’s most recent report card hanging on the fridge. He still sometimes gets overwhelmed at the sight of Zhenya’s coat thrown over a chair or when he finds one of the little notes Alina hides in his gear bag.

He’d found the most recent one inside his extra pair of dress shoes, on a roadie to North Carolina.

“yOU Are THE B E S T Sid xoxo” it had read, and he’s still got it in his wallet. He’s going to need to figure out what to do with all of them, because he has trouble fishing his debit card from amongst them sometimes.

But better than the notes or the warm signs of life his house now sports, are Zhenya and Alina themselves. When he comes home at an ungodly hour, on the nights he can convince Zhenya not to pick him up at the airport but to stay home and rest, he comes in as quietly as he can. He always looks in on Alina, to make sure she’s sleeping peacefully. Sometimes she stirs awake and then sleepily demands a goodnight hug. He’ll hold her for a minute, and drop a kiss on the top of her head. And he always feels unmade at how much he loves her, at how he’d set the world on fire for her.

And then he goes to his own room, his and Zhenya’s, and there Zhenya will be, always turned towards the empty side of the bed. As though even in sleep he’s waiting for Sid. And Sid can shed his uncomfortable suit and he can climb into bed beside the furnace that is his boyfriend, and Zhenya will half wake up, and will smile at him, slow and sleepy. And he’ll pull Sid in towards him and press sleepy kisses to his face and his lips, and wrap himself around Sid like a lanky octopus. And Sid will kiss him back, and he’ll wonder why intense happiness feels like a beautiful kind of heartbreak.

 

***

 

He know he wants to ask Zhenya to marry him from an inappropriately early stage in the relationship. Zhenya with his big, sweeping emotions and his terrible sense of humor and his ferocious love for his daughter.

He manages, somehow, to make himself wait two years, through a Cup win, and Alina’s eighth and ninth birthdays.

It feels right to talk to her first, somehow. He waits until Zhenya’s at one of his classes, and he and Alina are just having a quiet day at home. They’re watching the Redwings play the Blues, but the tv could be showing curling for all the attention Sid is paying it. Alina’s sprawled perpendicular to him on the sectional, her back leaning into his shoulder as she messes around on her phone.

“‘Lina,” he says. “I want to talk to you about something.”

She flops around until she’s lying flat on the couch and tips her head back to peer at him suspiciously. “Papa ate the last of the gelato, not me.”

“I  _knew_  it,” Sid says, but then refocuses. “But this isn’t about that.”

She catches on to the seriousness of his tone, and her eyes, so like Zhenya’s, go big.

“I, um. I’m thinking of asking your papa to marry me.” She’s silent, still staring, and he feels sick with nerves. “Is that— how does that sound? How would you feel, about that?”

She’s quiet for a moment that feels eternal. Sid’s stomach churns. There’s no way asking Zhenya himself is going to feel this terrifying, is it?

“Would you— “ she says, and stops. “Can I call you “Dad,” then? Because Papa is already Papa, but you— Sid! Sid, are you crying? Sid, what’s wrong? Sid!”

Sid wraps her up in his arms and hides his tears in her hair. He rocks her back and forth like she’s half her age, and when he can speak again, he wipes at the tears that have also started streaking down her face.

“I love you, so much. You know that, right? And–I’d be so—” his voice breaks and he has to take a deep breath. “So honored, if you wanted to call me that.”

“Okay,” she says, and snuggles into his chest. “Okay, Dad.”

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. 
> 
> Title is from "Light of A Clear Blue Morning," originally by Dolly Parton. 
> 
> You can find me as [creaturesofnarrative ](http://creaturesofnarrative.tumblr.com/) (main) and [knifeshoeoreofight](http://knifeshoeoreofight.tumblr.com/) (hockey blog) on Tumblr, and as @RainyForecast on Twitter. Come say hi and cry with me about how hockey both real and fictional has eaten our lives.


End file.
